1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for managing a record of documents and of the copy relationship between documents, and specifically to a system for recording the location and the identity of documents that have a copy relationship.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a system for managing the copy relationship between documents, a management apparatus is known that is described in the Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. Hei. 5-324438.
In this management apparatus, a link information table is provided for storing the copy relationship between documents by the use of mutual identifiers; when a copy operation has been performed, the copy relationship between documents is recorded in the link information table, and the document names of the respective documents are stored in an ID table corresponding to the document identifiers.
Therefore, the copy relationship between documents is managed in the link information table, and no matter how many times documents have been copied and recopied, by retrieving the link information table, one can easily obtain information about the copy relationship. Also, by retrieving the ID table based on the identifier of a document, the corresponding document name can also be easily obtained.
Here, when considering the actual use environment of documents, from time to time the contents of documents are updated, or their management location is changed. If such updates of document contents and changes of location could be managed, document management would be made more convenient.
However, with the conventional management apparatus, the link information table is simply for storing the identifiers of documents that have a copy relationship, and the ID table is also simply for storing the document names; one cannot perform such management as determining whether the contents of the original document and the copy document are identical to each other, and where each of the documents that have a copy relationship is saved.
Furthermore, in an environment where documents are actually used, a document processing apparatus that comprises a personal computer and so forth, does not only perform the copying of one electronic-data document to another electronic-data document; it performs various types of copy processing, such as copying an electronic-data document to a document printed on a paper medium, copying a document printed on a paper medium to a document printed on another paper medium, and copying a document printed on a paper medium to an electronic-data document.
However, with the conventional management apparatus, the copy relationship between documents with respect to these types of copy processing cannot be managed, and management that is especially suited to the actual use environment of documents is highly desirable.